Ghost Stories from TeufortA collection of the spooky tales and chilling images circulating the bases, passed from mercenary to mercenary.

What is this and why should I care?This is a community collaboration effort to celebrate all things spooky in time for the Halloween update! Fic, art and SFM posters will be bundled together like the contents of an investigation file, collecting strange tales and images circulating the bases.

The theme can be interpreted as “ghost stories and other oddities, as collected by the mercs.” Anything goes - as long as it is sufficiently supernatural, creepy, or otherwise in the spirit of things!

You should care because it's fun.

A bit about this project and how it will work:•Fic, art, and SFM works are all accepted!
•You may submit up to two works of any kind.
•All work will be compiled into a PDF, designed to look like an investigation file/collection of images and stories from the bases.
•Each individual page measures 1200px x 1800px and will be presented as 2-page spreads (eg: http://www.teamfortress.com/lecturevalley/ ). You will get an entire page per portrait-oriented artwork submission (landscape-oriented artwork will have to share). Stories may spread across multiple pages depending on length.
•The presentation style means yellowed and tattered pages for fics, and (ideally) staples, tape and/or worn edges overlapping some parts of the images.
•As such, images may have their edges slightly worn to fit with the overall style. If you would like to tweak your image to look worn and/or faded yourself, by all means go ahead! OR if this bothers you and you want your work left alone, please let us know and a white border will be put around the image instead.
•The individual pages of the PDF will also be exported as JPGs for easy sharing.
•All content contributors will be credited somewhere on their page alongside their work

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GROUND RULESThis project aims to be open and accessible to the overall TF2 audience. This means there are some ground rules so everyone can enjoy it equally, as not every aspect of fandom is palatable to every person. These rules also aim to tie the varying works in the project together.

•Works should be to your usual standard of quality. •Keep works to the theme. The theme is “ghost stories and related spooky stuff collected by the mercs.” Anything goes as long as it is sufficiently supernatural, creepy, or otherwise in the spirit of things!
•Works can be as silly or serious as you want them to be. •Keep it safe for work, roughly PG13 to M15+ (light cussing and TF2-level violence is OK). Pretty much the same rating as the game.
•Keep it canon and to TF2 lore as much as possible. TF2 canon does include zombies, wizardry/shamanism/magic usage, ghosts, sentient magical books, science gone awry, resurrection/respawn, and mythical creatures (Sasquatch, Nessie, Headless Horseman(n?) so far). For example, you could get away with a legend about a werewolf Demoman that stalks the corridors of Gorge.
•No names, unless canon.
•No original characters, unless playing a minor part (eg: shopkeepers, anonymous necromancers, mysterious old person who pedals suspicious concoctions, etc.).
•This also means no genderbends/femclasses•No shipping, sorry folks.
•Parodies are allowed•Collaborations are allowed. Just let us know who worked on what so they can be credited accordingly!
•Custom models are allowed as long as they abide by the other rules (SFW, plausible within the world of TF2, etc.)
•Keep your stories in English please (with the exception of character dialogue, of course)

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SUBMISSION STAGES

- You can start on your submission(s) and sent them through as early as you’d like.
- Sign ups close midnight Saturday October 19th EST
- Final submissions due midnight Saturday October 26th EST. Make sure your final submission(s) adhere to the Submission Guidelines section at the end of this post.

Please don’t post the final work here or anywhere else until after the project is completed, compiled and released on October 31st. Posting your WIPs and teasers to this thread and/or your personal site (to show what you’re doing or get help) is fine.

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HOW TO SIGN UP
If you would like to get involved, comment in this thread and/or email ghostfort.subs@gmail.com with the following information:

Name: Online moniker or real name (if you're game). If you would like to stay anonymous, please choose a random name for identification purposes. This will be the same name used in your credit line.
Contact method: If you feel uncomfortable including your email in the email field and/or comment body, please email ghostfort.subs@gmail.com. We need at least one method of contacting you! This email address will NOT be used in the book unless you specify in the next section:
Website, email address, etc. for credit line: This will be included in your credit line to accompany your work in the project. If you don't want to share any info, leave this section blank.
Number of submissions: You can submit up to two works.
Submission(s) format: Art, fic, or SFM poster.
Subject: Give us an idea of what your submission will be about.
Characters: List the most prominent characters in your submission. If entire team, just say “Entire team”. NPCs count as characters, too.
Artwork/SFM only - Do you want your work to be “roughed up” or would you prefer a white border?Artwork/SFM only - If you’d like your work to be “roughed up”, will you do it yourself or will you leave that to the designer(s)?

NOTE:Please do not sign onto this project unless you are willing to see it through to the end. Those facing emergency situations are excused. Assignments and exams are NOT emergencies. If you don’t think you can make the deadline or have changed your mind, send an email or leave a comment.

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SUBMISSION GUIDELINESImages (digital, drawn, and SFM)Dimensions: 1200px x 1800px (minimum). Portrait is preferred and will get the most display space, but landscape images can be accepted too.
Resolution: 72dpi minimum
Colour space: RGB
File types accepted: JPG, PNG, TIF, PSD. If your image is too large to be emailed directly, contact ghostfort.subs@gmail.com to sort out an alternative before the submission deadline.
You can sign your work, but please refrain from excessively large, obnoxious and/or out-of-place watermarks (you will be credited on your page anyway)
NOTE: As you can see this project calls for screen-use specs, since a print quality version of the PDF would be too large for distribution. If this project takes off, maybe one day we can have a printable PDF version so you can make your own copy.

Graphic designers wanting to help with layoutAll help is greatly appreciated! However, the following is required as a minimum if you would like to help out:
- Sound knowledge of the Adobe Suite (specifically InDesign and Photoshop)
- Experience with typesetting. You need to know what leading and kerning is, and how to do it properly.
- Working copy of InDesign CS4 or higher. CS5 is preferred.
- Experience with packaging InDesign files for distribution, or at least how to export a high-res PDF through the program
Contact ghostfort.subs@gmail.com if you’re interested in lending a hand!

>word limit
How about we make 2200 the absolute hard limit?
The sample spread was a bit above 500, and the font can't go any smaller or it will be illegible. This means a 2200 word limit will get you 4 whole pages to yourself!

>suggestions and ideas
Of course, do share! I'm a bit stumped for fic ideas, personally, so they would be much appreciated

>>14093Oh man, that sounds great! Looking forward to seeing what you do with it!

>requesting graphic effects and/or styling
Little requests like splatters and stains or torn pages are fine to ask for, but it all depends on time restraints and workload. At this point, I'm the only designer (halp!), and will work on submissions as they come in.

I am amazed at what I can accomplish when I sit down and have virtually nothing else to do.

Only issue is A: It's 1640 words, but the bigger issue is B: With my current formatting, it's 11 pages long.
Now, I don't exactly know how we can fiddle around with it, but I'm sure there's a way to make it fit properly. It's just a very linear sort of piece, and a lot of 'lines' are only two or three words.

I feel like, for the most part, it'd be fine to format it almost like receipt paper, if that's doable. I can send it off, along with my sign-up info, if you think that's something we can work with.

RULES UPDATE.. and other general things that weren't clear and/or have changed since the original post:

• Hard word limit is now 2000. This'll get you up to 4 pages if laid out similar to the text on the mockup page: >>14089

• Everyone is welcome. It became apparent there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about this project, so to repeat: Everyone is welcome, from any community, and there is no judgement as to who can get in or not. Let's all celebrate the game that brings us together and have fun

• The only people who can't/won't get in are:- people who miss the sign up deadline on Oct 19th
- people who submit work that's against the rules
- if I get totally swamped with submissions and can’t handle it on my own. Currently I’m the only designer and think I can handle about 40-50 pages worth of stuff so if I get much more than that, I’ll put out a submissions freeze.
--- If I put out a freeze I will let everyone know and the people who have already submitted to that point will be included.

Right now I can work on pieces as they come through, so the earlier the better!

Super excited to see you guys are keen. Can't wait to see what y'all come up with

>>14100if you get swamped with submissions, I'm sure there may be people willing to help you (myself included). I would much rather help out than exclude people. the bigger the community project, the better.

Just here with some clarification to an issue that has some people confused.

PAGES VS SPREADS

A PAGE is a single portrait 1200 x 1800 pixels page.

A SPREAD is a combination of two pages, side by side. This is how the end result will be presented.

This means that each spread will measure 2400 x 1800 pixels.
[NOTE: The final document dimensions may be subject to change, depending on how large in file size it gets. I don't think anyone wants to sit through a 200MB+ download on the day)

The image attached should illustrate this nice and clearly.

ART/SFM PRESENTATIONA single art/sfm submission will get one full PAGE (not spread). Artists/SFM'ers can have 2 submissions. This means you can either have two single pieces (one page each, displayed side-by-side or split up on request), or a single combined submission (one whole spread). Artists illustrating to fic will have their work split up to accompany each fic by default.

FIC PRESENTATION The max word limit for a single written submission is 2000 words. This will equate to roughly 4 PAGES (2 spreads) of text only per submission. A writer can have 2 written submissions.

It may seem as though the writers are getting much more space here, but we have two reasons for that:
• A polished written piece takes more space to paint the same picture as visually represented (artwork/sfm) pieces do.
• Writers have been grossly under-represented in fan collaborations up to this point, and limiting them to two pages max (like artists are) would have been detrimental to the quality of the project.
I understand these reasons are debatable. However, they were concluded from direct consultation with some writers contributing to the project, my own experiences as a writer and artist, and general observation of how other projects have been run thus far.

Hopefully this doesn't ruffle anyone's feathers, but I feel this is the fairest way to proceed from this point.

[NOTE: Once the project is finished, I would appreciate feedback on issues to take into account for next year. Next time, we may try working with page limits instead. orz]

I would have liked to do something for this, but I had a ton of homework and people telling me "You have to draw something for me, give it to me in less than a week", and I couldn't get anything done in time. I'm sorry.

>>14120No worries! A lot of people are in the same boat as you, with other life commitments and schooling and whatnot. Not to mention how short notice the project was this year (sorry everyone)

Next year, we'll have signups and submissions start a few months beforehand. And definitely give the designers more than a few days to put it all together... orz

But yes, as >>14121 mentioned, we have the TF2chan secret santa coming up (...right guys? We better be having that this year). And there's always the potential for other collab and jam projects in the future!

If you have any ideas, you could dump them in this thread: >>/dis/14063

Like anon >>14120, I would have loved to participate in this project, but I just didn’t have the time. Next year, I hope?

>>14122>we have the TF2chan secret santa coming up (...right guys? We better be having that this year)

I’m not sure what the status is for the TF2 Secret Santa this year. I hosted it last year, but it was a lot more work than I’d expected and I sort of felt I’d inadvertently bullied some people into participating by promoting the event on LOOK AT THIS FUCKING HIPSTR, or else people were just generally unhappy with the prompts they’d received despite my best efforts to avoid assigning triggering requests, or they didn’t like the pairing options, or they felt their gifts weren’t as expected, or maybe I didn’t do my job properly as a host, I don’t know; but the net result was most of the participants not even bothering to post a thank-you note to their own Secret Santa and a general air of indifference towards the whole thing, and it’s not like TF2chan has become more lively since then. I’m not sure how people feel about it now? If someone else wants to host the TF2 Secret Santa this year, I’d be happy to participate and lend a hand if necessary, but I’m not sure I’m up for the footwork of hosting it myself.

>>14123Yes, last year's Secret Santa was a little strange. The person doing my gift had forgotten/not sent in anything, so I had a pretty big letdown before someone took over my prompt (Still grateful for that)

GHOST STORIES FROM TEUFORT glorious compiled editionZIP file contains the compiled PDF version for all your ordered viewing, text-selectin' needs. If you find any of the fonts particularly unreadable, text is selectable and can be copied out.

Please don't repost, upload or otherwise redistribute the PDF or the JPG versions elsewhere. The original contributors will decide where and how they would like to share their work, and there will be a teaser post made to the Tumbles should you want to share that.

There's also a little something hidden away in the document. I'm sure some of you might get a kick out of figuring it out...

these are all splendidly spooky, thanks to mawaru for putting it together and everyone for contributing such quality writing and visuals in the spirit of the game and of halloween. i do believe i will have trouble sleeping tonight...